Saturday, 30 May 2009

Poetry and Worship

There are a couple of very stimulating posts on poetry and worship at Gathering and Scattered and Dancing Scarecrow. And I appreciated this incisive quote from the latter, 'Too much modern worship is prosaic. The majority of modern worship songs are as "dumbed down", repetitive and unimaginative as a Stock Aitken & Waterman, Hit Factory pop record. Worship, if it is to reflect divinity, must strive for the poetic glories, whether they be Bob Dylan or Beethoven, Duffy or Shakespeare.'

3 comments:

Many thanks for great refs, Geoff. I remember years ago seeing a 1700's volume of Wesley hymns on a bookstall in Cambridge. Wesley's intro explained that his hymns weren't just churned out by the yard like others. Book contained about 1500 hymns churned out by the yard, including about 30 of the greatest poems ever written in English. Maybe that's just how folk arts work.

A few years ago, our organist also gave me a photocopy of a worship song called "Jesus." The words were "Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, (line ending),Jesus, Jesus, Jesus, Jesus. It was Copyright 1984, I think. More a mantra than a poem?

About Me

I’m a Baptist Minister, currently serving as the Regional Minister/Team Leader of the Central Baptist Association (155 churches). In what now seems like a former life, I was a professional musician, playing bassoon in the English Northern Philharmonia, the orchestra of Opera North. I remain passionate about music - and the arts - and continue to play regularly. I love what I have been called to, and am deeply grateful for two fulfilling vocations. I’m married to Cazz and have two sons, Jonathan and Andrew, and I live in Milton Keynes, ‘the world’s best new city’.